Sig Christenson: A walk in the land of milk, honey and angst

In Kabul, small children work at jobs like selling candy to drivers, while half a world away in Bellaire, Texas, children laughingly chase each other and learn to hit a ball.

As I took a long walk yesterday in Bellaire, my hometown, everything I saw was striking.

This six-mile walk always takes me back into a generally happy childhood — the elementary school I attended, the baseball and football fields where I swung a bat for the first time and made my first tackle, the neighborhoods where we played, the trees we climbed, the metal risers at good old Feld Park built by a young man in 1965 who, some months later, was killed in Vietnam, and the two houses I lived in with several roommates — all good friends — while working my way through the University of Houston.

The walk starts on Mulberry Lane, a tranquil north-south street a short walk from railroad tracks separating Bellaire from West University, incorporated cities about eight miles west of Houston’s Medical Center. It runs pass Basswood Lane, a short, weaving road that connects Mulberry and Newcastle, which we knew as Avenue A back in the day. I take Elm from Avenue A to Avenue B, facing the entrance to the old school.

Then, a hard left that turns into a long, long walk among a thousand pines and grand oaks and well-manicured lawns, sweet scenery that lends itself to quiet contemplation and the happy feeling that you’re a rich man, baby, even if you’re really a workaday Joe.

Most of the homes I grew up with along these streets, the bulk of them one-story wood-frame houses with three bedrooms and a single bath — the dwellings of working-class families like mine — have been replaced by mansions, some of them running 12,000 square feet. The property taxes on these homes are more than I make in a year but, I’ll admit, I still dream of living in one of them, of being that affluent, of being back in the old neighborhood, the place of my origin and where I always find myself at night in my dreams. All those dreams explain the weekly Lottery ticket I buy at the corner store.

So there I was yesterday, lost in the fog, when I saw something that made me think.

A father stood behind a mesh screen, his son opposite him in a batting cage. He was a tiny kid with a big, oversize red helmet on his head. His mom stood two feet away on the other side of the hurricane fence cage watching the scene unfold. The first ball, spun out of a machine, whizzed right past him. The boy swung the bat at least a second late.

I shook my head and smiled. I was that boy once, swinging late — or early.

Just around the corner, a pair of toddlers laughingly chased each other on a thick, green lawn, a hundred fallen leaves being crunched underneath their tennis shoes.

Around this time I flashed back to Kabul. There was the little kid — one not much bigger than the boy taking battling practice — who wiped our windshield every day, even though it was clean. Another boy came over to us after we left Afghan Fried Chicken, where just about any meal costs more than an everyday Afghan earns — selling candies and gum.

“Mister, mister,” he said to me. “Dollar.”

One day I saw two toddlers, one wearing pink plastic shoes, play on top of a dirt hill within 50 yards of a group of heroin addicts who were getting haircuts, baths and clean needles. The kids, so absorbed in their game, thankfully didn’t see one young man as he hunched over the rolling brown earth, vomiting something green again and again.

Yesterday’s walk was so far away from the potholed streets of Kabul, where widows wearing light blue burqas worked between passing cars, one hand holding onto a young daughter and the other reaching out to me.

On that walk through Bellaire, the streets and sidewalks were next to perfect, a thick carpet of grass in front of every home and towering trees everywhere.

No begging. No hint of desperation.

In the week that I’ve been back, my friends have been complaining about everything from their marriages to their disappointment in Barack Obama. I’ve got a cold and am hoarse from an argument I had last night with an old friend who has a big house, a swimming pool and hot tub. He’s my age and hasn’t worked in years. Doesn’t need to, really.

Frankly, I’m disgusted. My buddy has no idea how good he’s got it, but, judging from the gnarly national mood, he’s hardly alone. America is fat. But for some reason, not happy.